ID-Pal raises over $7M for international expansion of cloud biometric KYC, AML solution

Ireland’s ID-Pal has revealed a €7 million (roughly US$7 million) Series A funding round and international expansion plans for its cloud-based biometric identity verification services.

The company has doubled its number of both employees and customers over the past 12 months. Those 12 months also included ID-Pal’s UK launch, and the sign-up of businesses from SMEs to large enterprises, according to the announcement. Customers include One4all, BDO, and American National University.

Strategic partners of ID-Pal include HID Global, RiskScreen, Sherpa Technologies, Temenos and Vesta.

The funding round was led by Inspire Investors, with participation from existing investor Act Venture Capital.

ID-Pal says it is uniquely positioned to help business simplify anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) compliance, with the help of these partners.

“Raising €7 million in Series A funding is a milestone achievement for our company and a testament to the product the team has built,” comments Colum Lyons, CEO and founder of ID-Pal. “ID-Pal identified a clear gap in the market in 2016 that traditional providers were not serving. We designed a solution that brings agility, convenience, and compliance to businesses of any size. Whether you are an SME or enterprise client, our global coverage and seamless user experience stands out from what other providers offer.

“The faith in our product shown by Inspire Investments and long-time champions of ID-Pal, Act Venture Capital, signal their confidence in the trajectory that we are on,” he adds.

ID-Pal notes that its solution for real-time ID document verification, face biometrics matching, liveness detection and digital address verification is ISO 27001-certified.

“We believe a good product is secondary to leadership, but across the first seeding round we saw the product go from strength to strength and by the time the third round came the strength of the product, management and clients were all on a par,” comments Derek Delaney, who leads Inspire Investments. Inspire is the private holding company for management of asset management service provider Waystone.

“As such, the five Waystone management who have been invested in ID-Pal across multiple rounds felt we could confidently present the full Series A to our colleagues. Something we have never done and would not without this level of certainty. 35 colleagues subscribed and these are all people who understand the AML/KYC world. We look forward to seeing Colum lead this incredible journey.”

ID-Pal raised over $1 million in September, 2020 to fuel the growth it has since achieved.

Digital KYC market growth to continue throughout decade

The case for further growth is strong too, with Polaris Market Research forecasting the market to reach $1.96 billion by 2029.

The global e-KYC market is forecast to grow at a 22 percent compound annual rate from 2017 to 2029, according to a report released earlier in 2022.

Polaris says cyber-attacks on small and medium-sized enterprises have boosted market demand, and sectors like ecommerce and healthcare are expected to adopt the technology across the board. On-premises deployments made up the largest share in 2021, according to the research firm, but cloud deployments are expected to grow proportionally.

Article Topics

AML  |  biometrics  |  document verification  |  face biometrics  |  funding  |  ID-Pal  |  identity verification  |  KYC